Sinking Atlántida, resurrecting Victoria: Manuel de Falla’s Late Years

The process of aging in Manuel de Falla was accompanied by an increasing deterioration of the Spanish nation. The feeling of alienation from the Spanish institutions and society and from both camps of the Spanish Civil War increased the preoccupation of Falla in the legacy of earlier composers. The unbearable situation of his country after the Civil War made Falla seek refuge by physically distancing himself in exile and by seeking the company of colleagues of the past with whom he identified, especially Tomás Luis de Victoria. At the end, Falla was unable to resolve the conflicts generated by the tremendous events, and to finish his most ambitious project: the ‘scenic cantata’ Atlántida.

Manuel de Falla: An Emblem of Spain

In 1898 Manuel de Falla was 22 years old. This year was critical for his country, since it signals the moment in which Spain lost its last colonies overseas, in what became a shameful defeat at the end of the Spanish-American war. Falla graduated with honors from the National School of Music and Declamation (the name of the Conservatory of Madrid at that time) the following year and rapidly progressed as a composer, winning important first prizes in piano and composition in 1904. Feeling constrained in his professional possibilities he moved to Paris in 1907, where he would spend the next seven years. Upon his return in 1914 and due to his success in Paris, Falla emerged as the leading Spanish composer of the time. The esteem of his fellow countrymen would weigh as a responsibility for Falla, who felt he owed Spain a grand work, which would eventually become the scenic cantata Atlántida many years later. This project, for personal, national, and international events, would be left unfinished even after having absorbed Falla for 20 years. In these last years of his life, Falla would “seek solace in Victoria” and other earlier composers, especially from the Spanish Renaissance, arranging their compositions in “expressive versions.”[1]

The Republic and the Falange

Since 1874 Spain had enjoyed a period of relative political stability after the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. At the same time, the poor performance of the economy gives way to the appearance of anarchist and socialist movements. Millions of Spanish migrated to the Americas, epidemics and famines devastated the population. The centralization of the power and political influence provoked the reaction of Vasque and Catalan nationalist movements, which were crushed by the central government. At the turn of the century Spain had already been a peripheral country for European politics and arts as well for quite some time. The “disaster of 1898,” the Spanish-American war, in which Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philipines, was perceived as a low point in Spanish history. This crisis of identity gives birth to the literary movement called “Generación del 98” characterized by a search for the essence of the Spanish nation, while seeking the integration of Spain to Europe through modernization. Felipe Pedrell shows this duality in his music and his teachings, for he embraced Wagnerism as modern while imbuing it with a Spanish nationalistic message.

During the first third of the century the political system was unstable, the democratic continuity was interrupted frequently, and all this was aggravated by a colonialist war in Morocco. The deterioration of the political landscape gave way to the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923-30), who used the Italian fascism as his model. The world economic crisis of 1929 proved to be too strong for the dictatorship and in 1930 Primo de Rivera resigned. The monarchy, which had supported the dictatorship, was overthrown in 1931 by the government that would last until de Spanish Civil War: the Second Republic.

By this time the social inequities were extreme: the Republic had started an agrarian reform that was stopped when the center-right took control of the government in 1934, generating strong discontent among the peasants, who lived in the most abject poverty. In the cities, the industrial proletarians were not much better. The owner of a factory would say to his employees: “Five pesetas per day was when you won in 1931, now [1934] it’s three pesetas.”[2] The polarization of classes was aggravated by the clashing views of internal nationalisms (Catalonia, Vasque) and the right, which traditionally denied them any autonomy. The Catholic Church, a traditional institution in Spain, had been under attack in 1931: many churches were burned by the revolutionary left deeply offending the right. On the other hand, the Catholic Church was a permanent ally of the right, and the photos of cardinals blessing the rightist troops enraged the left.

In 1936 the left recovers the government through general elections. By 1934, José Primo de Rivera, the son of the dictator, founds the Falange, which would bring together the forces of opposition to the Republic. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) divided the country in two both politically and geographically. In each part whoever was suspect of sympathizing with the enemy was persecuted or even executed. Spain quickly became also the field where the forces of the future World War II measured their strengths, with the allies supporting the Republic, and Italy and Germany supplying the Falange. The war ended with the defeat of the Republic and the beginning of the thirty six year long dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

In the years preceding World War I Falla joined the intellectual life of Paris. There he made friends with Dukas, his teacher, Debussy, Ravel, and the Spanish artists living in the French capital. His most admired colleague was Claude Debussy, in whom he saw the aesthetic answer to the path he was seeking as a Spanish composer. His sympathy with the cause of French music led him to also share the despise of German music. As a devote catholic, he saw the origin of the defects and what he called lack of grounding in tradition of German music in Protestantism. During World War I the neutrality of Spain was harshly criticized by pro-republic groups and Spain divided between aliadófilos and germanófilos and Falla identified with the first.

Falla was a fervent Catholic for all his life. As the Civil War approached the right in Spain became increasingly pro-German and Catholic, while the left turned anti-clerical and opposed to Fascists and Nazis. Falla was caught in between: his Catholicism did not diminish because of his anti-Gemanism and the burning of churches in 1931 at the beginning of the Republic affected him profoundly. The increasing deterioration of Spanish society and European politics became a burden for Falla, who, unable to cope with them, finally emigrated and took refuge in a double exile, moving away from Europe and evading the present.

The search for a renewal of values through the music of the past driven by Debussy and which led to Neo-classicism was one of the strongest concerns for Falla since his permanence in Paris. Falla considered each race had its own expression, an essence that should not be betrayed. At first, he found the Spanish essence in his country’s folklore (Siete canciones populares españolas), in cante jondo (El amor brujo), later moving towards El quijote and Castilian song(El retablo de Maese Pedro, Harpshichord Concerto). Castile began to be regarded by Falla as the center of Spanish cultural purity, “distancing himself from andalucismo”[3], and other regional expressions. In El retablo de Maese Pedro (1919-22), this move towards Neo-classicism is complete: the setting for puppets, the use of El Quijote, and more importantly, the citation of a madrigal by Francisco Guerrero (1527-99), a gallarda from a book for guitar from 1674 by Gaspar Sanz, the medieval Cantigas of Alfonso the Wise, and Pedrell’s Cancionero show his increasing interest in the music of the past, especially the music of Castile. The favorable reception of El Retablo convinced Falla of his destiny as a central figure for the re-establishment of Spanish pride: the work was praised for its originality “affirmed definitely the name of Spanish modern music in the universal world of arts.”[4]

Another trend in Falla during the 20s was a move towards mysticism. Speaking about Falla’s Retablo, Juan del Brezo wrote in a newspaper article: “for art and, in general, life to be fecund, one must have that enthusiasm, that ardor, that purity and conviction that translate into mysticism.” The sense of Falla’s mysticism was also found in the Harpsichord Concerto (1923-26), which has been described as possessing “a burning religious intensity,” showing “extraordinary spiritual evolution,” and as “fiery, even austere.”[5] Complementing these views was the perception of Falla as an ascetic Catholic: “It seems that all guilt of sensuality has died in him. He has conquered the voluptuousness of the ear with the victories of an ascetic and a monk.”[6] According to Carol Hess this mysticism and asceticism represented “the soul of old Spain.” For Falla, the composer who best represented the mystic spirit of the Spanish soul was Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611). He had a signed copy of the book by Henri Collet on Victoria, and made annotations in it where Collet describes Victoria’s “austere Catholicism” and “ardent mysticism.”[7]

By the time Manuel de Falla turned fifty, he already was an internationally prestigious composer. His name was cited along those of Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartók, Poulenc, Milhaud, Malipiero, etc. In 1929 and 1930 the first collections of essays about Falla were published. At age fifty Falla also started to concoct an ambitious project. It would be a homage to Cádiz, Barcelona, Seville and Granada, to the Spanish nation, to justice, and to Catholicism. In 1926 he became interested in La Atlántida, a poem in Catalan by Jacinto Verdaguer (1845-1902) and began setting it to music in 1928. The initial idea was to develop it as a two act work, but as Falla’s enthusiasm increased so did the proportions of the plan, growing into a three act cantata with scenic representation. Falla estimated he would be able to finish the work by 1930, but the project became more complex in his mind, requiring his research on history of the discovery of America and Christopher Columbus, the Atlantis legend, Latin American civilizations, the history of Cádiz, the Catalan language, and philosophy of the classical period.[8]

The writing of Atlántida would be a task that would consume Falla’s last twenty years. One of the impediments for its conclusion was his health. As soon as he started to work on it in 1928, he suffered an attack of iritis (a painful inflammation of the iris); in 1933 he suffered a nervous collapse and was ordered by his doctors to stop working; in 1936, the year the war started, he was feeling weak and “in the brink of death” and suffered another nervous breakdown, in 1938 he underwent multiple surgeries. All this delayed the completion of Atlántida, but they cannot be the only explanation.

The anti-clericalism of the Republic became evident as soon as it gained the power in 1931. Falla’s sympathy towards it vanished immediately. In 1934 Falla voted for the right in the general elections. By this time Atlántida had not yet been completed. His doubts on the subject of the project also became evident by the time of the Civil War. As Ronald Crichton pointed out:

In the later stages of composition the romantic nationalism and rosy, proselytizing view of Spanish imperialism may have become difficult to sustain, but the immediate appeal to Falla of the subject, with its emphasis on the mythical and historic glories of the Spanish past, the concern with regions or cities of Spain for which Falla had particularly strong affection, and the essentially religious approach, is not hard to understand.[9]

Atlántida was not only about an imperialist Spain and its regions, but also sung to the glory of a triumphant Catholic Church, a church that had taken sides in a political war that exterminated thousands of his fellow countrymen, including some of his friends. “Given the sorry state of Spanish Catholicism, the cantata's emphasis on the Church triumphant may even have begun to strike Falla as hollow.”[10] Indeed, moments like the chorus Hymnus hispanicus with its invocation to god and its praise of the glory of Spain would have sounded like an insult to those defeated in the war, or to just about anyone at the time of the horrors of World War II.

In 1939 Falla accepted an invitation to conduct a series of concerts in Buenos Aires. His success in Argentina made him decide to move permanently there, despite the attemps of the government of Franco to make him return to Spain, luring Falla with a life annuity and several honorary positions in the government. Falla ignored all of this completely, he did not identify with the new government. His progress in Atlántida continued to be tentative, he did very little in his last years and the work would remain unfinished at the moment of his death. The works of earlier composers, especially by Victoria, would become a place where Falla would seek comfort in his latest years.

            The explicit honoring of places and persons, especially previous composers, increased as Manuel de Falla became older, although the homenaje was crucial for him since his first compositions. The concern with the essence of the Spanish soul inherited from the generation of 98 led Falla to write music honoring the different manifestations of it: from the Cuatro piezas españolas from 1909 and cante jondo in El amor brujo, towards the places and people he admired and the past artistic glories of Spain. Falla’s first explicit homage is Homenaje a Debussy (1920), a short composition for guitar commissioned by La Revue Musicale after the French composer’s death. From the late 20s through the Civil War, all of Falla’s original compositions were homenajes (Table 1). Balada de Mallorca (1933), is a double homage to Mallorca and to Chopin, for it is an arrangement of Chopin’s Second Ballade in F for piano. Falla’s last completed works would also be in honor of persons he admired: Fanfare on the Name of E. F. Arbós (1934) and Hommage pour le tombeau de P. Dukas (1935), and the Suite homenajes (1938) in which he combined orchestrations of previous homages with a new composition dedicated to Pedrell.

Table 1

Homenaje (to Claude Debussy)	Guitar	1920
Soneto Manuel de Falla’s explicit honoring a Córdoba	Voice and piano	1927
Balada de Mallorca	SATB choir	1933
Hommage pour le tombeau de P. Dukas	Piano	1935
Fanfare on the Name of E. F. Arbós	Orchestra	1933-34
Suite homenajes: E. F. Arbós, C. Debussy, P. Dukas, F. Pedrell	Orchestra	(1920-) 1938
Atlántida	Orchestra, choir, and soloists	1926-46

Table 1 – Falla’s Homenajes since 1920 (original compositions)

During the 30s, as his compositional output diminished and his doubts on Atlántida increased, Falla also became interested in developing “expressive interpretations” especially of the works of his admired Victoria, but also of Vecchi, Morales, Guerrero, Encina, and Escobar (Table 2). His incidental music for autos sacramentales by Calderón de la Barca and Lope de Vega are also a tribute to his Spanish heritage. The arrangements of works by Victoria were Falla’s main concern. His arrangements from 1932 were performed in a concert in San Sebastián that year. “Although not an overtly political act (sacred polyphony and church music in general remained largely untouched by Republican anticlericalism) the performance can be considered one of Falla’s more eloquent public statements on the religious turmoil that so perturbed him.”[11]

By the end of the Civil war Spain and Catholicism, the two institutions in which Falla had invested his pride and confidence, turned out to be different from what Falla had idealized. He was unable to come to terms with this in his works: Atlántida would have indeed sounded hollow in its portrayal of a glorious Spain to anyone who had experienced the bitterness of the Civil War and the ruthlessness of the first years of Franco’s dictatorship. Falla escaped from the catastrophe that were Spain and Europe to Buenos Aires, but all the success and admiration he found in the cosmopolitan and noisy city, although pleasant and comforting, were not what Falla was looking for. He had to escape again, now to a remote town in the sierras of Córdoba. The physical escape is probably mirrored in his approach to the Spanish mysticism of the 16^th century. Religion for Falla was a deeply personal matter and he probably found company in the perceived religious intensity of Victoria. The moments that sound true in Atlántida are those, such as La Salve en el mar, closer to the religious Falla, to the image of the composer in an inner world without contradictions, a place where the composer chose to be, removed from political turmoil.

Year	Homage to:	Work:
1927	Góngora on the tricentenary of his death	Soneto a Córdoba de Luis de Góngora
1927	Calderón de la Barca, Gaspar Sanz, Spanish folklore, Victoria	Incidental music for the auto sacramental El gran teatro del mundo, by Calderón de la Barca. 1. Toccata (Gaspar Sanz/Cecilio de Roda 3. Alaben al Señor (on a Cantiga from Pedrell’s Cancionero 4. Alma al otro/Que en el alma (from Pedrell’s Cancionero) 8. Tantum ergo (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
1932	Victoria	Duo seraphim clamabant Probably an expressive interpretetion for SSAA. Manuscript non found
1932	Victoria	Sanctus ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATB, probable from Misa salve.
1932	Victoria	Ave María ‘Expressive interpretation’ for 7 voices
1933	Chopin	LXXVIII. Balada de Mallorca Based on lyrical sections of Chopin’s second Ballade, op. 38.
1934	Orazio Vecchi	L’Amfiparnaso ‘Expressive interpretation’ for 5 voices
1935	Lope de Vega, Sanz, Wagner, Spanish folklore	Incidental music for La vuelta de Egipto, auto sacramental by Lope de Vega. 1. Toccata (same as in El teatro del mundo) 2. Invocatio ad individuam Trinitatem 3. Chorus (from Parsifal) 4. Angelus Domini apparuit in somnis Joseph (from Cancionero de Palacio) 5. Cantiga LXI (from Pedrell’s Cancionero)
1935	Victoria	LXXXIV. Officium hebdomadae santae ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATB
1937	Pedrell	LXXXV. Himno marcial Arrangement of “Canto de los Almogáraves” from Pedrell’s opera Los Pirineos with a new text by José María Pemán. Written at the request of government officials during the Civil War
1938-9	Arbós, Debussy, Dukas, Pedrell	LXXXVI. Homenajes, Suite 1. Fanfare sobre el nombre de Arbós 2. A Claude Debussy (Elegía de la guitarra) 3. A Paul Dukas (Spes Vital) 4. Pedrelliana For large orchestra. Only the last movement is new, the other three are orchestration of previous works.
1939	Cristóbal de Morales	LXXXVII. Emendemus in melius ‘Expressive interpretation’, for 5-voice mixed choir
1939	Francisco Guerrero	LXXXVIII. Prado verde y florido ‘Expressive interpretation’, for SATB
1939	Juan del Encina	LXXXIX. Romance de Granada ‘Expressive interpretation’ of Encina’s Qué es de ti desconsolado, for ATB
1939	Juan del Encina	XC. Tan buen ganadico ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATB
1939	Escobar	XCI. ¡Ora, sus! ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATB
1940-42	Victoria	XCII. O mágnum mysterium (In circuncisione Domin) ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATB
Â	Victoria	XCIII. Tenebrae factae sunt (Responsorium V) ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SSAT
Â	Victoria	XCIV. Miserere mei deus, Salmo 50 ‘Expressive interpretation’ for double choir (SATB+SSAT)
Â	Victoria	XCV. Vexilla regis ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATB. Manuscript not found
Â	Victoria	XCVI. In festo Sancti Jacobi (Flux et decís hispaniae) ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SSATB
Â	Victoria	XCVII. Benedictus (de la Misa vidi speciosam) ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SA (children) TT or SAAT
Â	Victoria	XCVIII. Gloria ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SSATTB
1942	Pedrell	XCIX. Glorya al Senyor ‘Expressive version’ of Pedrell’s motet from Los Pirineos
1941-42	Pedrell	C. Romance de Don Juan y Don Ramón ‘Expressive interpretation’ for SATTBB
Â	Pedrell	CI. Canción de la estrella
Â	Â	Revision of the orchestration of an aria for soprano and orchestra from Los Pirineos

 Table 2 – Falla’s Homenajes since 1920 (arrangements)

Notes